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Compared to 'anime' aesthetic, why are there so few western games w/ 'comics art' aesthetic?
- Thread starter Hey Please
- Start date
I would kill for an X-Men fighting game that looked like Dragonball FighterZ. But with the 90s comic/cartoon aesthetic.
Madworld was made by JP devs (Platinum Games).
Good because that's not what Xenosaga said :P
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This guy gets it. Superhero media is flying high but it has never actually lifted the sales of the books those heroes are from.
I think thats what the "mobile game atheistic" is. The ones that look like the sims 4 or fortnite
I'd kill for games that drew from comic styles like Copra, Old City Blues, Darwyn Cooke's Parker instead of always going for the chunky action-figure hero look
I would summon Ochizon if it meant getting a video game with concept art by Michel Fiffe.
This game is based on a bande dessinée from Belgium so no surprise by how it looks ! :P
I don't think you can categorize "western" comics as that unique superhero look. It is very us-centric, here in brazil if you want a "comic" look you'd have to take our most popular comics, which basically would mean this:
Also,i can't prove anything, specially because i'm not the target demographic for american comics, but i'm fairly sure manga has been bigger than superhero american comics for a good while now in brasil. That's all i grew up reading, fullmetal,cardcaptor sakura,etc.
Also,i can't prove anything, specially because i'm not the target demographic for american comics, but i'm fairly sure manga has been bigger than superhero american comics for a good while now in brasil. That's all i grew up reading, fullmetal,cardcaptor sakura,etc.
Because:
And that's just physical copies in the US as tracked by NPD. It doesn't take in account digital sales/subscriptions (which are an abysmal 9% for comics), international sales or the massive amounts of pirating/scanlations.
Or to put it in another way, the current best selling superhero comic is My Hero Academia.
And that's just physical copies in the US as tracked by NPD. It doesn't take in account digital sales/subscriptions (which are an abysmal 9% for comics), international sales or the massive amounts of pirating/scanlations.
Or to put it in another way, the current best selling superhero comic is My Hero Academia.
It's really weird, but as humongous as comic book adaptations are, the actual comic books themselves seem like they are more niche than anime and manga, even in USBecause:
And that's just physical copies in the US as tracked by NPD. It doesn't take in account digital sales/subscriptions (which are an abysmal 9% for comics), international sales or the massive amounts of pirating/scanlations.
Or to put it in another way, the current best selling superhero comic is My Hero Academia.
This. Anime is literally everywhere in Japan. It's used in ads and you see it on trains and on products and on everything.
Although, somewhat ironically, all cartoons are referred to as anime in Japan. My students would call Disney movies anime. A Justice League cartoon would be anime. And they would frequently translate it to "animation" in their assignments, regardless of whether it was western or eastern style, which showed how they viewed it.
Let's not forget there a ton of games with cartoony visuals like fortnite. You hit the nail on the head that comics aren't seen as fashionable among western art directors. It is Pixar designs that western devs follow if they choose to go cartoony.
Void Bastards was the most recent one I could think of.
Hot damn, that's one of the best looking games I've seen in a while! Shame it probably won't get a Linux version though.
In the west, comics are generally viewed as something for children (and nerds). In Japan, it's perfectly normal for a grown man to be reading a manga novel.
We tend to make anime the umbrella with a lot of styles under it, while for the west we tend to picture comics as a branch of a bigger tree that includes other things like cartoons, both being separate.
Possibly because when the boom of classic comics occurs with characters like superman, Mickey Mouse,etc were already famous, so animation in the west is not tied to the aesthetics of paper publications. Even though there are comics of all these Disney characters, and of all manner of other cartoons we still picture something different from cartoons when hear comics as a style for drawing.
For example. Among the recent popular cartoons of the last few years, which one would you say looks like a comic book? Arguably, it should be all of them, but in practice we don't normally picture things like Adventure Time, Rick and Morty, and Bojack Horseman when we hear the word comics, we think of Young Justice and the like.
In the same vein, when we see games like Untitled Goose Game we don't think they have a comic book aesthetic, but in theory, they do.
Possibly because when the boom of classic comics occurs with characters like superman, Mickey Mouse,etc were already famous, so animation in the west is not tied to the aesthetics of paper publications. Even though there are comics of all these Disney characters, and of all manner of other cartoons we still picture something different from cartoons when hear comics as a style for drawing.
For example. Among the recent popular cartoons of the last few years, which one would you say looks like a comic book? Arguably, it should be all of them, but in practice we don't normally picture things like Adventure Time, Rick and Morty, and Bojack Horseman when we hear the word comics, we think of Young Justice and the like.
In the same vein, when we see games like Untitled Goose Game we don't think they have a comic book aesthetic, but in theory, they do.
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I feel like it's a fairly safe guess.
I knew Kimetsu no Yaiba was killing it but this number is ridiculous... Lmao
lol
Comparing anime to comics seems kinda weird given that they're in different mediums. Surely a more apt comparison to comics would be manga, and I cant think of many games that use manga aesthetics.
The closer comparison for anime would be western animation but there are plenty of games that use that kind of style, from Fortnite to Ratchet and Clank to Overwatch
The closer comparison for anime would be western animation but there are plenty of games that use that kind of style, from Fortnite to Ratchet and Clank to Overwatch
Based
It's mildly misleading (though obviously still extremely impressive.) Each new volume of One Piece sold better than any new volume of KnY, but since the KnY anime was such a hit they had a huge flood of legacy sales on all the past volumes.
So per volume OP is still ahead, but obviously for that one period following the anime airing KnY sold an absolutely crazy number of books.
How did this thread go so long without a single image of Darkest Dungeon?
Mentioned on the first page at least :P
Also, OP, there's no such things as western comics. Comics are pretty much a US thing and US devs tend to go with a realistic/gritty look.
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Not really american superhero comics, but there was a 3 musketeers game about 15 years ago on PC that used celshading to mimic the look of european comics like Asterix or Lucky Luke
The entire US comic market collapsed ages ago. Graphic Novels and Manga both do terribly in the US, but at least Manga is bolstered by Japan & the rest of the world unlike American comics. The heavy dominance of manga in Japan also guarantees a continued level of talent that the American comic scene lacks (most American comics are done by veterans as the talent has been more online focused if there at all). At this point, the American comic scene is held together by two factors: 1) the resilient group of roughly 2000 comic book stores (though COVID has devastated them), and 2) that Hollywood basically subsides the industry as a glorified writing room for their movies & shows (hence why superhero comics still dominate)
glad to see this get mentioned so quickly. the look still holds up really well too.Ultimate Spider-Man
And I always forget the name but there's this motorcycle game that used to be in arcades. You'd pull the handlebars out to jump and in to slide and you have to run from the cops. It had a comic feel too but idk if it was a Western dev.
Edit: Nah it was a Sega game called Wild Riders. Nevermind
need more comic book games to go for stylized looks instead of aiming for the MCU aesthetic
Yeah this is the thing. Comic Books are way too specific and it's not like videogames largely take and reproduce the manga look.
The more equivalent comparison is western cartoons which there are far more instead of the games going for the direct comic book look.
Lol. Came here to mention this. Codename STEAM was so unpopular it only gets one mention here....though not a western dev. Not sure why the dev needs to be western to embrace the aesthetic, but that's the thread title.
Sorta a false analogy though since anime is almost entirely based on the manga aesthetic while US cartoons mainly refer back to 1950s/60s cartoons or Disney (if not anime itself). From that viewpoint, Manga/Anime vs American comics is still an apt comparison based on the argument set by the OP
i feel like if there were more proper direct comic book adaptions to begin with akin to 'Batman: The Killing Joke', comics would have vastly more popularity.
cause most anime is taken straight from manga, it's not changed much. so you can watch an anime, be given a cliffhanger, and then continue right from there from the respective manga chapter. thus millions are encouraged to actually buy manga for popular series to keep reading a story.
the comic book adaptions we have don't really have that. you can't watch an Avengers movie and then go to the comics to see what happens in the next one. even a lot of the deeper lore doesn't carry over between them. there's just no give or take there.
cause most anime is taken straight from manga, it's not changed much. so you can watch an anime, be given a cliffhanger, and then continue right from there from the respective manga chapter. thus millions are encouraged to actually buy manga for popular series to keep reading a story.
the comic book adaptions we have don't really have that. you can't watch an Avengers movie and then go to the comics to see what happens in the next one. even a lot of the deeper lore doesn't carry over between them. there's just no give or take there.
Yeah, the anime was pretty great so I'm not surprised. If only One Piece was on its level... I guess there's no incentive to make a better anime as the sales have been amazing for a long time now.
And it is a damn shame. Comics are such a wonderful medium, but the market collapsed decades ago and cape shit still dominates. Still, there is so much truly wonderful work out there if you know where to look
I think I should have specified that I was talking about the superhero comics
Comics in general is a super broad thing. Manga is Japanese comics.
I had steered clear of comics for a while since I thought it was mostly superheroes
But then about four-five years ago, I discovered that the medium was a goldmine for amazing sci-fi, horror, and crime stories. Haven't looked back since
Stray Bullets, Metabarons, Sweet Tooth, Prophet, Manhattan Projects, Sex Criminals, Lazarus, Southern Bastards, Mouse Guard, Parker, Sword Daughter, Velvet...just decades of awesome, creative, bold genre stories
Do people even read comic books anymore? Like of all the nerd shit I only know one person that actually buys them and even then they only get like 1 a year.
And they always end up being terrible.
They want to be as accurate as possible:
These movies aren't kids movies.
And they always end up being terrible.
The problem isn't incentive, really it's schedule. The show has the single best manga series in the world to work from, if a good studio had the ability to restart at the beginning and work their way through the material at their own pace a few cours at a time it would incredible. That's what happened to Jojo, that's what happened with HxH 2011, that's what happened the FMA:B, that's what happened to AoT, etc, etc.
Because the pacing of those shows wasn't limited by the source material (or in AoT's case they didn't mind taking years-long breaks between seasons), the creators had the freedom to adapt 2-3 manga chapters per 20 min episode, which for the most part seems like the best pace for most series.
instead the issue is the One Piece anime has been running continuously, weekly, for 20 years and so if they crammed 2-3 chapters-worth of action into every episode they'd have run out of chapters years ago. So the OP anime is instead forced to crawl past at the glacial snail's pace of 1 chapter/episode, and it makes it like watching paint dry it's so slow moving.
But maybe one day...10 years from now after Luffy becomes pirate king and the series draws to a close... someone can give it to David Production and pay them to start over and make it their next Jojo. Then SBR can take even longer.
Part of why World of Horror is so cool. Clearly drawing from Ito's style, rather than the stereotypical "anime" style
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I'd love to see Japanese games that evoke Tsutomu Nihei's Blame/BioMega style
As of now Kimetsu no Yaiba is beating OP per volume actually. Most of KnY vols should of crossed the 3 million mark with no signs of stopping. The only thing OP has over it is total sales which makes sense because it has 96 vols while KnY has 24. KnY has basically beaten One Piece in yearly and individual sales which is an huge achievement.
THANK YOU! Thought I was going crazy lol.How did this thread go so long without a single image of Darkest Dungeon?
Yeah this.
Also, "Western" mean US-American, I keep forgetting that apparently. Came into this thread wondering if someone had brought up the beautiful Moebius homage that is Sable yet.
Man if "anime aesthetics" were really a thing, everything would look like Detective Conan or One Piece, but even ignoring the fact of what the big popular ones are you act as if everything looks like Sword Art Online, but only the second season, where they added more waifus.
What about these games that look a lot like the (European) comics I read:
I'd love one that follows Juan Giménez's style too
Now that's what I'm talking about when I say comics.
After Sable, some awesome dev needs to get on making a trippy Incal inspired ride of a game.
It is so funny to me that lot's of indie games idea of a comic style is "mike mignola" xD
...is that slapstick?
a marvel game has SPLAPSTICK ?
Should be noted that Monica's style is much closer to manga since Mauricio himself was a friends with Tezuka
...is that slapstick?
a marvel game has SPLAPSTICK ?
I don't think you can categorize "western" comics as that unique superhero look. It is very us-centric, here in brazil if you want a "comic" look you'd have to take our most popular comics, which basically would mean this:
Also,i can't prove anything, specially because i'm not the target demographic for american comics, but i'm fairly sure manga has been bigger than superhero american comics for a good while now in brasil. That's all i grew up reading, fullmetal,cardcaptor sakura,etc.
Should be noted that Monica's style is much closer to manga since Mauricio himself was a friends with Tezuka
Yeah all of Joe Mad's game came to my mind right away.
Darksiders?
Oh I had no idea, I guess I was thinking of the 2019 data. That's really impressive.